Platform GÁTT (NO/DK/SE/ISL/FIN/FO)

Iceland has the presidency of the Nordic Council in 2019 and is launching a new multi-year project for young, Nordic artists.

The Reykjavik Arts Festival is leading the initiative and has invited the Bergen International Festival and other festivals and institutions from Greenland, the Faroe Islands and Finland to take part in the creation of an international meeting place for young Nordic artists within every arts discipline.

The initiative is called Platform GÁTT, from the old Norse name for ‘doorway’. The institutions select a handful of young artists for the project, whose contributions also include nominating additional participants. The goal is to create a large network of young artists based in the Nordic region. Together they will carry out different artistic projects and participate in workshops hosted by the artistic institutions.

‘The young artists pursue wide-open chains of thought reaching out in every direction. The impact from such encounters at an early stage of your artistic career has a lifelong effect. We wish to facilitate for young artists to meet a wider range of potential partners across different disciplines and provide a platform for them on which to present themselves, says Festival Director Anders Beyer.

Bergen International Festival is the first to receive visiting artists from Platform GÁTT. Next in line is Nuuk on Greenland in October, then Reykjavik Arts Festival and the Helsinki Festival in 2020, followed by The Nordic House on the Faroe Islands in 2021. All artists in the network are invited to a final gathering in Reykjavik in spring 2021.

Platform GÁTT is a collaboration between the Bergen International Festival, Reykjavik Arts Festival, Helsinki Festival, Nordic House in the Faroe Islands and Nordic Institue in Greenland/Nuuk Nordic.